


Crying over spilled milk is highly overrated

by goldkirk



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/M, HOW MUCH MORE COULD YOU ASK FOR GUYS, Nerdiness, and humor, coffee shop AND college AU, plus fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-12
Updated: 2015-02-12
Packaged: 2018-03-12 03:12:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3341414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldkirk/pseuds/goldkirk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Armin gets philosophically ticked off at coffee shop patrons and Mina really knows her Shakespeare.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crying over spilled milk is highly overrated

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ClosetTherapist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClosetTherapist/gifts).



Armin didn't normally spend more than two minutes in the campus coffee shop.

Walk in, tug on hoodie, order coffee, fiddle with phone, grab order, get out. The system worked pretty well for him; no muss, no fuss, minimal chance for social anxiety flare-up—Freshman year you were supposed to be social and make friends, he knew, but he had friends and he was _fine_. Just fine. He would come out of his 8 AM Calculus class, stopped in to grab hot chocolate on his way to the next class, and then walked to the next building with a couple of minutes to spare, just enough time to open up his notes document and settle in for the lecture. And it always went exactly the same way...until the Wednesday of his Calc midterm. 

Incidentally, it was on that same Wednesday that Mina—rocking farm-chick pigtails and plaid—started work as the baristas' new slave.

* * *

Armin had the great and terrible misfortune of being truly brilliant at Calculus. Because now, lucky him, he had forty minutes to kill before his next class started—all thanks to the fact that it only took him thirty to finish the exam. 

He didn't live on campus, so he couldn't go back to his dorm room. It was only nine in the morning, so the cafeteria would be flooded with people trying to grab breakfast before their classes. The library study nooks would be full, as well. That left...the coffeeshop. Where admittedly, he did need to go anyway for his drink, but he didn't want to, y'know... _stay_ there.

As he stood on the sidewalk, Armin agonized over his options. He had to choose fast, because the geese were getting closer and he really didn't want to get run down by them again like last week.

"Well," he sighed through his scarf, "at least it's better than standing out here and getting chased by one of the geese."

* * *

 

Eight minutes later, Armin was huddled in a seat at one of the window tables and buried in his laptop, clutching his cardboard cup like his life depended on it. He didn't have any homework at the moment, he wasn't working on any drawings. He didn't have a book with him he could read, and he didn't have a friend to talk to.

In a stroke of inspiration, he pulled up the word document with the lines he was practicing for an shakespeare audioplay audition. Then he realized what a dumb idea it was. He couldn't practice them in public! But he didn't have anything else to do either. He ended up reading, re-reading, and re-re-reading them before finally trying to mumble inflections under his breath. He started getting into it, still quietly but with feeling now. Nothing but him and the emotion and lines. 

He noticed, then, that some of the people around him—the same ones who were having loud vapid conversations about the latest celebrity news or how Sasha had brought food into the computer lab and was Franz actually dating Hanna or did he actually love Hitch but NO WAY Hitch is totally called by Marlowe—were shooting him glances. And for the first time in weeks, instead of getting overwhelmed by embarrassment and retreating in submission to the bathroom, Armin started to get mad.

No, scratch that. Armin was ticked.

The coffee shop was a public place. You were allowed to talk and make noise and take up space and be there. HE was allowed to. He had every right. And he wasn't bothering anyone. If anything, the others were bothering him—coffee houses were historically the meeting places for thinkers, the places where ideas were discussed and theories were evolved and revolutions were planned and conversation was meaningful. That definitely wasn't happening here. These were the conversations you could have in the cafeteria or your dorm room or in the backs of lecture halls or on skype. The coffee shop was supposed to be a place to connect and collaborate and think and create, helped along by the joyous effects of caffeine. That was the entire draw of the places for most of their existence. So who were these people to judge him for actually working on a creative and thoughtful enterprise in one of the nurseries of democratic discussion? 

Armin suddenly remembered what Taylor Swift had said in one of her interviews: "You don't like me being who I am? Watch me be who I am more." And instead of whispering the next line, he took a deep breath and shouted.

_"I f you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty! But you were not honest, and I have been a fool deceived!" _ All sound ground to a halt and every eye in the place turned to Armin. He immediately regretted his decision. As everyone stared, Armin began to flush with embarassed shame—

"Doubt thou the stars are fire!" a voice suddenly rang out in response. Everyone's attention snapped to the speaker, a short girl with black pigtails and a too-big green apron standing behind one of the counter muffin displays. "Doubt that the sun doth move. Doubt truth to be a liar, but  _never_ doubt I love!"

Armin could not believe his eyes. Ears. Whatever.

He spoke again, a challenge in return.  “Call me what instrument you will; though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me.” Someone off to the side whistled.

The girl's voice came again, slightly hesitant. " This was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. I did love you once."

Armin tilted his head. " Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so." He raised an eyebrow at her, silently egging her on.

She lifted her chin, switching to blunt truthfulness. " You should not have believed me, for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it. I loved you not!"

"Et tu, Brute?" one guy threw out. The girl next to him smacked his arm and hissed  _shut up Eren, listen._

Armin swallowed.  “Wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them!"

“There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy," the girl defended. "Who is to say that the rules you abide by are the only good and right way?"

He nodded in agreement.  “There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so."

" Thus conscience does make cowards of us all," she exclaimed, flinging her arms out for emphasis and knocking straight into the poor freckled barista, whose metal jug of milk was splashed all over the girl. She stood startled for a moment.

Armin flung a hand dramatically up to his forehead and exclaimed with gusto, " Alas, then she is drowned!”

The applause was deafening, but he only had ears for the clear and pleasant laughter of his drenched and intellectual new friend.

* * *

Armin didn't get the part, but he did get a friend. And when they talked until all hours of the night about everything from Keats' poetry to the power needed for humans to feasibly undertake interstellar travel without running out of fuel, he knew that it couldn't have worked out better.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I took liberties a little bit with the quotes, but I didn't butcher anything. I added a little and changed the order, that's all. :)


End file.
